Seven tips for getting creative ideas

Often, ideas appear spontaneously, but sometimes creativity needs some help on the way.

A creative idea should be new, original and useful. An already existing product can be improved through small changes and adaptations. But creating a whole new product is much more difficult and requires more creative approaches.

In most cases, concepts from two or more completely different areas are combined into something new and useful. Not infrequently, the inspiration for this comes from something you have seen in nature or around you.

Gutenberg got his inspiration for the first printing press after noting how grapes gave colour imprints on the wine presses.

The idea for the first Teflon cooking pans came from the wife of a French engineer who saw him use the new smooth material for his fishing tackles.

There are many different techniques for how to increase your creativity by mixing different thoughts,concepts and ideas, but often they come spontaneously without effort when you least expect it and when you just let the thoughts wander.

Seven tips to hatch your creative idea

Carry a notebook where you can write your ideas right when you get them. Make notes of your ideas, observations and reflections.

Creative ideas often appear in the borderland between awakeness and sleep and reality and dreams. If you get a new insight or idea in such a situation, it is important to catch it before it disappears. Please repeat it loudly before writing it down.

Make a playlist of music that will make your thoughts roam freely and make you more receptive to thoughts and ideas.

When faced with a creative challenge, try to imagine how someone else might have approached the problem. Maybe one of your role models, or someone with a completely different background than your own.

Consider your problem or challenge from as many angles as possible. Can you replace, combine, change, reduce, enlarge, or delete any part?

Find ways to use common items such as a plate, a pen, a toothbrush for something else than its normal use.

And perhaps most important of all: be completely open and permissive when you hatch ideas. Try to get as many ideas as possible – possible, impossible, crazy, serious, funny, bizarre, boring. Only when you have accumulated a large number of ideas can you start evaluating how useful they are.